


Woe Be Unto You, Mr. President

by RonnaWren (Wolf_of_Lilacs)



Category: Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Bananas, Chocolate Box Exchange 2019, Crack, Gen, Treat, interspersed with the author's usual pedantry, yes actual bananas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-26 20:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17753171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/RonnaWren
Summary: It's all closing in.





	Woe Be Unto You, Mr. President

**Author's Note:**

  * For [copacet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/copacet/gifts).



> Copacet, I was quite taken by your prompt. I hope you enjoy my attempt at lightheartedness.
> 
> I tried to include Mueller, but he kept slipping away, as he seems to do.

It's all closing in.

Trump kicks the blankets off, changes his mind, drags them back onto the bed. Then he's exhausted again, goes back to sleep, and has the same dream of encroaching doom. Tonight's incarnation is Pelosi herself (or maybe she's impeachment, or maybe it doesn't matter), wielding a flaming sword, shadows prowling hungrily about her, closer and closer to him. She smirks, and oh he's seen that smirk before. He cringes away from her, but it does no good. She is inexorable.

*

"Mr. President, you have a meeting this morning." He doesn't remember who the hell this is. Just one of the help that likely does a half-assed job. They all do a half-assed job. That's why he's fired practically all of them (um, had other people do the firing). And they sure as fuck aren't getting better.

"Not an interview?" If he begs enough, it might turn into an interview. He won't fire this guy, if that happens.

"No, a meeting. You've been putting this one off for a week, Mr. President. We can't keep rescheduling. The joint chiefs get mad when we do that."

"Fine." Half an hour later, wearing his favorite ill-fitting suit and his second-favorite scotch-taped-tie, Trump sits in the Oval Office, the joint chiefs glowering across at him. "Hi," he says brightly. "How are you fellows today?" Their expressions do not change. He wilts.

In the middle of a boring explanation of some map of troop movement, the meeting is mercifully interrupted. By breaking news. Staffers phones go off with CNN alerts. There are running feet in the hall. Someone drops a binder that hits the floor with a loud _thunk_. (That would have been Reince, a lifetime ago, Trump thinks with something close to nostalgia.)

"The Special Counsel has finished the investigation, sir." Pence has the honor of delivering this news. Trump doesn't understand why he's the one stuck with it, but it doesn't matter much.

"What?" he says blankly. "I said I wanted the investigation closed! Why doesn’t anybody listen to me?"

"I'm sorry, sir." Pence hangs his head in a show of deepest contrition.

"Are you, Mike?" The joint chiefs have left. Trump can still hear people rushing about outside. "You want my job, don't you, Mike?"

"You may still be cleared," Pence protests. "I don't want to be—"

“Sure, Mike. I need a Coke. Diet. Same as usual."

"Of course. I'll find one." Pence goes.

*

It's like kicking a lumbering puppy, Mueller thinks. Delivering the most pertinent points of his report to the increasingly incredulous House committee is almost just another day, all things considered. He's spent so much time pouring over the information his team returned, and well…

"On the part of Mr. Trump," he says at last—after hours of back and forth over the indictments handed down over the last months, "I conclude no intentional collusion, only a lot of coincidence." There are coughs of disbelief.

"Aspirational collusion, if you will," he decides.

"Mr. Mueller, that is not a possible charge—" the vice chair protests.

"You have my report. My work is done here." They watch him go in disappointment. The last sight of him is the edge of a heel, a last glimpse of silvery hair. His part in the narrative is done, anticlimactic yet decisively so.

"Well," says Nadler, the committee chair. "Well."

"Well what?" Collins, the ranking Republican, sighs, resigned.

"This can't go on." In the gallery, there are whistles. Articles of impeachment never sounded so good to Nadler, as the audience—that he probably shouldn't have invited—almost moans it.

Things might be quiet again. Surely.

The full House votes to impeach. "Woe be unto you, Mr. President," the Speaker says as the vote is tallied. It becomes a phrase heard round the world.

(It features prominently in Trump's nightmares, reverberating in his head.)

"I want to speak in my defense!" he announces the next morning.

"As your attorney, I strongly advise against it—"

"I don't need you! Go talk to Jared." Trump throws a banana. His onetime attorney catches it. He's been fired; best to take what he can get, before a new attorney is hired to sue him.

"I didn't do any of that stuff," Trump protests before the Senate. They look on imperiously; he sweats under the scrutiny, wishes be were somewhere, anywhere, else. A thousand eloquent excuses go through his mind. “It’s not my fault!” Magnificent.

McConnell pokes his head out of his shell long enough to disagree. "The record speaks for itself, sir." (His approval rating has tanked at home. He's not winning reelection. He can do as he pleases.) "All in favor of conviction and removal from office?" A lifeless question from a doomed man.

The vice president, there in case of a tie, blanches. "Please don't, please don't," they can hear him muttering, over and over. He looks a bit mad. His vote is not needed, bless him. (It would never have been needed, given the requisite two thirds majority. No one had the heart to tell him.)

_Inauguration Day, Take 1_

“My fellow Americans.” Mike Pence coughs awkwardly into the microphone, which gives an ear-splitting screech in response. Startled, he takes a fidgety step to the left. His foot meets with an overripe banana. Someone—Trump himself, ensconced in the place of honor for ex-Presidents, even disgraced ones—had thrown it. It was from the same bunch as he'd given his erstwhile attorney. Prolific bunch. Historically significant bananas. They're going rather brown by this point. Perfect for causing missteps. He'd been planning this moment for weeks, after all. Nothing was going to stop him.

Pence hits his head on the edge of the podium. It's only a concussion—according to the folks at Walter Reed, but the humiliation is too much for Pence, who resigns effective immediately.

"Poor guy," CNN concludes at the end of its hastily-made, two-hour Pence biopic. "And so, his career ended with a strategically placed banana."

Which leaves, of course, the next in line to the presidency, Speaker Pelosi herself.

Trump, in house arrest, wandering around in an untied bathrobe and bunny slippers, takes the news with grace, meaning that he screams for an hour instead of two and then goes to lie down. It's not his problem anymore.

_Inauguration Day, Take 2_

Pelosi takes the oath of office with deepest humility, hand heavy upon her dog-eared Good News common language Bible. There is no immediate past president to watch; this moment is hers alone. The microphone does not screech. There is no strategically placed banana. “This is a new beginning,” she proclaims.


End file.
